The storm that has hit the Middle East obliges each state to choose whether to enter the scientific age or not. If it does not, it will have no growth. The great and intriguing debate in Egypt today is about the constitution, in effect about whether to give women freedom or not. It is here that the Arab Spring will be judged. President Obama asked me who I think is preventing democracy in the Middle East. I told him, “The husbands.” The husband does not want his wife to have equal rights. Without equal rights, it will be impossible to save Egypt, because if women are not educated, the children are not educated. People who cannot read and write can’t make a living. They are finished.
Egypt made al Jazeera -- and Syria's destroying it.
The networks use the very real challenges of reporting from inside Syria as an excuse to avoid stories that challenge their preferred narrative. Elsewhere, for instance, articles have raised questions about the credibility of the widely quoted Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based Syrian opposition outlet — but Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya haven’t touched the story. Newspapers around the world have also focused on the presence of terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, among the anti-regime fighters — but such a possibility is rarely, if ever, entertained on the main Arabic stations.
Both channels also suffer from a “Yasir Arafat” dichotomy — a reference to the late Palestinian leader, who had a habit of tailoring his message depending on his audience. The stations’ rhetoric differs greatly depending on the language they broadcast in. For instance, Al Jazeera English and Al Arabiya’s English-language website have broached the topic of al Qaeda fighters in Syria, even as it goes unmentioned on their vastly more influential Arabic-language counterparts. Instead, the Arabic-language channels continually host guests who refute any suggestions of the sort.
Al Jazeera Listening Post: Bahrain - a small kingdom cracking down on the media in a big way.
![Good News: How the revolution transformed Egypt’s media.
The transformation of Al-Ahram has been almost comically drastic. Every day for years, the newspaper’s chairman, Abdel Moneim Said, and its editor in chief, Osama Saraya, wrote editorials that began on the front page of the paper and continued onto Page 3. Saraya was a devout Mubarak loyalist, and Said a “reformer” associated with Hosni Mubarak’s Western-oriented son, Gamal. As soon as Mubarak fell from power on Feb. 11, both men became ardent enthusiasts of the revolution. “The people ousted the regime,” that day’s headline blared. The shamelessness of the switch became a standing joke. Younger journalists at Al-Ahram had shoved Saraya aside long before he was forced out, and this formerly powerful figure is now regarded with ridicule. Even so, says Shukrallah, “they continued to play the game: [They would write,] ‘The youth of the street is so wonderful, but now it’s time for everyone to go home.’”
Then, on March 30, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf fired Saraya, Said, and the leaders of the other state-run papers and the news agency. On March 31, Al-Ahram appeared with no editorials at all on the front page. This was quite a delicious shock to readers. Hala Mustafa, a longtime democracy advocate who had been banned from the state-run media after quitting a dubious reform body organized by Gamal’s supporters, told me, “Now it’s just the news — according to the importance of the news.” The front-page news the day I called her consisted of a picture of Mubarak and an article about the effort to put him on trial. The same thing had happened at Rose al-Youssef, another state-run mouthpiece of the ruling party. No more front-page editorials — just the news, according, more or less, to its importance. Mustafa is writing once again in Al-Ahram. [+]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljgapfiMOw1qz9m0ho1_500.jpg)
Good News: How the revolution transformed Egypt’s media.
The transformation of Al-Ahram has been almost comically drastic. Every day for years, the newspaper’s chairman, Abdel Moneim Said, and its editor in chief, Osama Saraya, wrote editorials that began on the front page of the paper and continued onto Page 3. Saraya was a devout Mubarak loyalist, and Said a “reformer” associated with Hosni Mubarak’s Western-oriented son, Gamal. As soon as Mubarak fell from power on Feb. 11, both men became ardent enthusiasts of the revolution. “The people ousted the regime,” that day’s headline blared. The shamelessness of the switch became a standing joke. Younger journalists at Al-Ahram had shoved Saraya aside long before he was forced out, and this formerly powerful figure is now regarded with ridicule. Even so, says Shukrallah, “they continued to play the game: [They would write,] ‘The youth of the street is so wonderful, but now it’s time for everyone to go home.’”
Then, on March 30, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf fired Saraya, Said, and the leaders of the other state-run papers and the news agency. On March 31, Al-Ahram appeared with no editorials at all on the front page. This was quite a delicious shock to readers. Hala Mustafa, a longtime democracy advocate who had been banned from the state-run media after quitting a dubious reform body organized by Gamal’s supporters, told me, “Now it’s just the news — according to the importance of the news.” The front-page news the day I called her consisted of a picture of Mubarak and an article about the effort to put him on trial. The same thing had happened at Rose al-Youssef, another state-run mouthpiece of the ruling party. No more front-page editorials — just the news, according, more or less, to its importance. Mustafa is writing once again in Al-Ahram. [+]
It’s Domino Theory time
Domino Theory is making a sustained comeback. The theory first emerged in the 1950s. The idea was that if a country fell to Communism neighboring countries would be more likely to fall as well. Domino Theory was the reason we became involved in Vietnam. If Vietnam fell to Communism so, too, would Laos and Cambodia and Thailand. The progression of the Soviet menace had to be stopped at all costs.
After the fall of the Wall Domino Theory went out of vogue. It wasn’t until a group of Soviet experts took on substantial national security responsibility in the Bush Administration that Domino Theory came back into style. Condoleezza Rice, a Soviet expert, pushed the theory that an invasion of Iraq would lead to a functioning democracy that would then pressure other countries in the region to democratize. This theory — Reverse Domino Theory, if you like — was the driving force behind the American invasion of Iraq. It wasn’t WMD, it wasn’t Saddam’s despotism. It was an overriding belief that a democratic Arab world would offer America sustained security. This is because democracies don’t fight other democracies.
The Bush Administration abandoned its Middle East democracy agenda after Islamist parties made gains in Gaza and Egypt around the beginning of the Administration’s second term. Those events were enough for Israel and Egypt to convince the Bush Administration that democratic reform wouldn’t necessarily lead to peace and security — in fact, it could lead to the opposite. Suddenly Mubarak looked like our last, best hope for sustained stability in the Middle East. This was ironic since al-Qaeda’s primary complaint about the US is that we prop up undemocratic regimes like Mubarak’s Egypt.
So Domino Theory made a comeback after 9/11 and then went out of vogue again about four years later. And now it’s back. Tunisia, now Egypt. It looks likely that the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes, once fully democratized, will be reasonably American friendly. They look more like newly democratized Eastern European countries than Iran. And so we return to Domino Theory, or Reverse Domino Theory. Will more Middle Eastern regimes fall? Will Yemen be next? Syria? Will Bahrain fall? If Bahrain does fall, will the new regime still allow us to base The Fifth Fleet on their soil?
The questions have returned. And, ironically, the only functioning Middle Eastern democracy is the nation most vociferously opposed to further Arab democracy. The Israelis are terrified. They have relied on anti-democratic strongmen to ensure peace along most of their borders. How can they rely on a vaguely Islamist — or even Islamist-influenced — Egyptian government to maintain peace?
The fears are overblown. First, the dominoes will not fall nearly as quickly or nearly as forcefully as the Israelis fear. Bahrain will see change. Libya may see change. Chaos may reign in Libya, but Libya can’t get much unfriendlier. The reality is that these kinds of grand realignments always take longer than people expect. Israel and the United States will have ample time to realign their foreign policies to meet the new reality.
We won’t see a dramatically changed Middle East in six months. It’ll take a decade. Most of the undemocratic regimes in the Middle East will successfully put down their nascent revolutions — the revolutionary movements in countries like Syria, Jordan, Bahrain, Libya and the others are much less organized and enjoy a much smaller base of support than the revolutionary movement in Egypt. This could change at any moment but it currently appears unlikely… these regimes have learned from Egypt’s mistakes and are responding with strong carrots and strong sticks (a strategy that mixes generous pay raises and even outright bribes with brutal repression of protest). This strategy is likely to work in the short term but not in the middle to long term.
Meanwhile we have to understand the nature of the revolutionary movements in Tunisia, Egypt and other locations where they are likely to be successful. These are not the Islamist uprisings that bin Laden has pushed for over the past two decades. These are movements led by dissatisfied youth who have fallen in love with Western economics and Western ideals. These movements have more in common with Otpor than they do the Taliban. These movements will liberalize their nation’s economies and social structures. They will allow some Islamist influence, but the Islamist influence will be in the style of Abdullah Gül rather than Mullah Omar.
At the end of the day Israel and the United States can take comfort in Democratic Peace Theory, coupled with a basic fact: nations make war when it makes sense for them to make war. Countries with huge surpluses of military-aged males make war. Countries with economics going in the wrong direction make war. Countries with governments that need to distract the people from disaster at home make war. Countries on the right track do not make war.
We’ll all be okay. And Israel and the United States — Israel especially — must place itself on the right side of history. Trying in vain to prop up undemocratic regimes will only set Israel back. Memories are long in the Arab world. Being on the wrong side of these movements will ensure animosity towards Israel in these country’s new governments. But being on the right side of history… clearly stating that democracy is in Israel’s interest… clearly stating that Israel’s thoughts and prayers and benedictions lay with the protesters, although Israel does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. This is how Israel ensures its safety and security for the next fifty years. By embracing the democracy movement. It’s too bad that Netenyahu is an unreconstructed Likudnik. Oh, how we yearn for Sharon and Barak and, yes, Peres. And maybe most of all Rabin. Generals who learned peace over captains any day.
The Historic Role Of Humor In Egyptian Politics
Making fun of oppressive authorities has been an essential part of Egyptian life since the pharaohs. One 4,600-year-old barb recorded on papyrus joked that the only way you could convince the king to fish would be to wrap naked girls in fishing nets. Under Roman rule, Egyptian advocates were banned from practicing law because of their habit of making wisecracks, which the dour Romans thought would undermine the seriousness of the courts. Even Ibn Khaldun, the great 14th-century Arab philosopher from Tunis, noted that Egyptians were an unusually mirthful and irreverent people. Egyptian actor Kamal al-Shinnawi, himself a master of comedy, once said, “The joke is the devastating weapon which the Egyptians used against the invaders and occupiers. It was the valiant guerrilla that penetrated the palaces of the rulers and the bastions of the tyrants, disrupting their repose and filling their heart with panic.”
And there has been plenty of material over Egypt’s last half-century, marked as it has been by a succession of military leaders with little care for democracy or human rights. While Egyptians may be virtually powerless to change their rulers, they do have extensive freedom to mock, unlike in nearby Syria, where a wisecrack can land you in prison. In Egypt’s highly dense, hypersocial cities and villages, jokes are nearly universal icebreakers and conversation-starters, and the basic meta-joke, transcending rulers, ideology, and class barriers, almost always remains the same: Our leaders are idiots, our country’s a mess, but at least we’re in on the joke together.
Egypt’s rulers before Mubarak, Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser and Nobel Peace Prize winner Anwar Sadat, were flamboyant characters, and the jokes told about them reflected their larger-than-life personas. The paranoid Nasser was said to have deployed his secret police to collect the jokes made up about him and his iron-fisted leadership, just as the KGB anxiously monitored the fabled kitchen-table anekdoty about its gerontocratic leadership to really understand what was happening in the latter days of the Soviet Union. Sadat, though best known in the West for making peace with neighboring Israel, was the butt of joke after joke about his corrupt government and attractive wife, Jehan.
When Mubarak came to power after Sadat’s assassination, he was received with a mixture of relief and skepticism — relief because he appeared to be a steadier hand than Sadat, who grew increasingly paranoid in the year before his death, and skepticism because Mubarak was the opposite of anything like the charismatic leadership that Sadat and Nasser embodied. Mubarak was also, at least early on, something of a joker himself. Not long into his reign, he quipped that he had never expected to be appointed vice president. “When I got the call from Sadat,” he told an interviewer, “I thought he was going to make me the head of EgyptAir.”
And so the White House waited, watched, danced, and shuffled — and probably talked too much.
But such are the travails of a great power having to live in the bed that it has made. And the story of contradictions in U.S. policy and America’s conundrums are far from over. The real challenge the United States will face in the post-Mubarak era is that Egypt has been, and is now still, a praetorian state where the military holds tremendous power. And the United States has an interest in maintaining close ties with that military as well as encouraging political reform. Therein lies the next conundrum. With great apologies to W.B. Yeats: I wonder what new bargain slouches toward Bethlehem, waiting to be born?
- egypt.alive.in
- more info @ stevewyshywaniuk.tumblr.com
I think President Mubarak needs to be treated as he deserved over the years, because he has been a good friend. He’s been a good man, a good friend and ally to the United States. We need to remember that.
Dick Cheney, reminding us that a friend is a friend forever.
This is similar to what Harry Whittington said when Cheney shot him in the face:
“My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with. We hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves.”
Dean Acheson used to disparage his critics by comparing them to the farmer who pulled up his seedlings every evening to see how successfully they were taking root. It was a good line, but it did not really describe the success of American policy in the early Cold War. Acheson did not simply plant the right seeds and wait patiently for the harvest. Nor did Henry Kissinger or George Shultz. Effective policy always has in it more experimentation, improvisation, even process of elimination, than its authors like to admit. If a year from now, the Obama administration has not run through at least three or four new ways of thinking about its problems in the Middle East, I’ll be very surprised.
Selling the original art for my @neilhimself poem poster via twitter auction. @mollycrabapple to bid. All proceedsgo to the Tor project and help with providing internet for Egyptians during the current crisis.
Art is pen and ink on bristol board, 11” x 25”, signed by me.
Here’s the final version of the poem poster, with graphic design by Nicola Black.
Awesome! As of 10:46AM EST, the highest bid is $300.
If you’re not familiar with the Tor Project, go here. If you’re not familiar with Molly Crabapple’s work, watch this.
The Al Jazeera Revolution (Photo by Joseph Eid)
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Egyptian men and women outside the halls of power have challenged their rulers and have sought a voice in state affairs, only to be stymied by the forces of order. Up until the 1950s, foreign troops from Britain and France put down the popular uprisings. Foreign interventions to suppress popular demands has left a strong suspicion that the big powers in the world, at present the Americans, will in the final analysis defeat the wishes of the people. Since then, the Egyptian military has put down those movements of popular dissent that proved beyond the capabilities of the security forces. Yet, never before have the soldiers faced such large numbers. If the military is to be taken at its word, it is no longer available to repress protesters. Nor is this surprising, given the fact that the military is a conscript army and those who would be called upon to curb the actions of the people would have to turn against their own relatives and friends. The only hope for Mubarak and his National Democratic Party is that foreign powers will come to the rescue as has occurred so frequently in the past. At the head of these powers would be the United States, which has relied on the Mubarak government to maintain political stability and support for American policies in this volatile region. The Americans may be willing to sacrifice Mubarak, but they are unlikely to view favorably a government in which Muslim elements have a strong voice. Even so, how the ruling elements and the army will restore calm short of allowing free and democratic elections, with possibilities for Muslim Brothers to enter the government, remains the big dilemma for the ruling group in Egypt and its American backers.
